Anatomy
by flying cat
Summary: HouseCuddy. Retrospective fic. Cuddy recalls her time at med school, quite vividly in fact. Mild Humpty Dumpty spoilers. Rated M for nasty language, anatomy class, cadavers, graphic lacrosse scenes and mild smut you were warned.


Summary: House/Cuddy. Cuddy recalls her time at med school, quite vividly in fact. Subtle spoilers for Humpty Dumpty.

Rating: M for anatomy class, cadavers, medical themes, graphic lacrosse scenes and mild smut- you were warned.

Feedback: Thankyou sir, may I have another?

Disclaimer: Don't own them, just playing with them.

When you met him in med school, he was already a legend. You were bright, naïve, enthusiastic and ruthlessly ambitious; so much so that every Professor knew you by name within the first fortnight of semester. One afternoon following a tutorial on primary facial nerves you elected to engage your anatomy Professor in an incredibly thorough discussion of facial muscle paralysis, your enthusiasm extending the tutorial to well over two hours. One by one your peers left, leaving you and the Professor alone in the lab with a guy, probably a fourth or fifth year camped in a far corner hunched over a chunk of cadaver. At the conclusion of your conversation you noticed the guy in the corner hadn't moved in the entire time you have been there.

"Who's that?" You asked the Professor, curious as to the identity of the dedicated dissector and were astounded at his response. The Professor removed his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily and sighed almost in resignation before gazing wistfully across the room.

"That is Greg House."

"That's Greg House?" You repeated the Professor's words, allowing reality to sink in. You had heard of House, he was a maverick final year who spent his days lecturing Professors and badgering his supervisors during hospital based pracs. He rode a beat up old Harley Davidson Sportster and refused to wear a lab coat. You heard that as a first year while following a Doctor on rotations through the local teaching hospital, he swiped a patient's chart and proceeded to berate the Doctor in question for misdiagnosis. Had he not have been right, he probably would have been thrown out.

"How long has he been working on that?" You asked, largely in awe of the young man on the other side of the room.

"Around 16 hours." The Professor replied. "He's brilliant, an absolute artist, his dissections are perfect. Would have made a brilliant surgeon."

"Would have?"

"Surgery bores him." The Professor pointed to a carefully dissected left forearm floating in a jar of formaldehyde on the shelves behind him. "Greg did that. 28 hours of dissection time."

"Wow." You leant forward, studying the exposed tendons of the pickled limb.

"He was drunk when he did it." The Professor sighed, noticing the light in your eyes as you watched the young man in the corner. "You're a good girl Lisa, bright, ambitious, you'll make a great doctor some day. But a word of advice, stay away from him." He nodded toward the corner. As the Professor finished speaking you heard quiet laughter emanating from the corner of the room. It began as a chuckle before progressing to what could only be described as an almost insane booming laugh. He had heard everything. Greg House span on his stool looking at yourself and the Professor, alarming blue eyes flashing under the fluorescent lighting.

"Don't worry Bob." House twirled his scalpel expertly between his fingers as you watched on in awe. "I've only got eyes for Betsy here." He patted the corpse before turning back to face it. "I swear darling, she means nothing to me."

The Professor shook his head, and you studiously helped him return the various sectioned pieces of cranium and thorax to the cool room, consumed with thoughts of the mysterious Greg House.

You learnt from a guy in your pharmacology class that Greg House played on the college lacrosse team. Intrigued and desperate for further knowledge you asked what he was like.

"He's the sort of guy who shouldn't participate in team sports." Came the response.

"Why, isn't he any good?" You asked the obvious question.

"No, he's brilliant. Probably the best player on our team." Your new 'friend' sighed in resignation. "He's an arrogant asshole. Plays for himself."

You went to watch the lacrosse team's next home game and were struck by the grace and athleticism of the tall, lean number 13 who dominated midfield play for much of the game. You never really understood lacrosse, but it was easy enough to infer that he had done something to earn the ire of his team mates when one of them belted him across the head with his stick at the final break. Helmet in hand and dousing himself with a cup of water you recognised number 13 as Greg House, standing off to the far side of the team huddle, ignoring the coach's address and stretching his upper back luxuriously in the sunshine. The game restarted and you were captivated as he glided across the grass around opponents, spinning a lazy 360 degrees past a defender and flicking the ball into the net before jogging back to position as his team mates stood, hands on hips watching. He refused to pass the ball.

You decided to go down and talk to your 'friend' after the game in the hope he would introduce you and caught him just before he got to the locker room. He seemed happy enough to see you, they had won but he refused to speak to House, citing the fact that he barely knew him and didn't like him anyhow. You congratulated him on the victory and stood at the edge of the field, staring across at the scoreboard.

"Lisa?" A male voice to your left permeated you thoughts. You span in the direction of the sound. There he was swaggering toward you, twirling his lacrosse stick deftly through the fingers of his right hand. Skin slick with sweat, he had removed his appropriately numbered shirt and the shadows created by the afternoon sun only served to accentuate the muscles of his torso. He stopped a few metres from you, watching you carefully.

"Greg?" You asked, somewhat lost for words as you admired the lean athlete in front of you.

"You didn't come all the way down here to watch me, did you?" He flicked his lacrosse stick upright and began tapping the end against the grass before leaning heavily on it, shorts slipping lower off his left hip where he had jammed his shirt into the waistband.

"I ah…" You paused, distracted by the sharply defined 'v' of his abdominal muscles, your eye travelling down the line of his left oblique to the suspicious patch of dark hair now visible where his shorts had slipped. He watched your eyes and made no attempt to cover his newly exposed skin. "I've got a friend on the team." You garble, waving a hand nonchalantly.

"No you don't." He continued to watch you intently, noting every nervous movement and gesture. "There are three first years on the team, chances are you know at least one, but you're not friends with any."

"You don't know that." Suddenly you understood why people hated him; he was too clever.

"Lisa Cuddy, high flying over-achieving med student," Greg House shifted his weight as he spoke, you watched the muscles in his body twitch as they accommodated his new posture and wondered whether his shorts would fall to the ground in the process.

"And on the lacrosse team we have John from accounting, Paul with the nasty pot habit from English and Jeff, old money med student frat boy who'll probably be out of here at the end of semester." He tapped his stick against the grass a three times. "So which one of those charming boys is your bestest bestest buddy?"

"Okay." You paused, no longer over-awed but irritated by him. "So let's say for argument's sake I came here to see you. What would that make me?"

"That would make you a groupie." Greg House grinned at you wickedly, glancing down at his crotch before raising his eyebrows at you suggestively.

"I don't think so." You shook your head at him. "They were right, you're an asshole."

"Do you know why all the male professors like you so much?" House slowly began to close the distance between the pair of you. "It's not because you're smart or enthusiastic, or because you ask all the right questions and offer textbook perfect answers." He stopped about eight inches from you and made eye contact with your chest. "They like you because you've got the best set of tits most of them are ever likely to see in their sad lifetimes."

"Greg." You stared at the grass between your feet, blushing.

"Here." He pulled his shirt from where it was wedged in the waistband of his shorts and draped it over your shoulder.

"What's this for?" You asked looking at the white shirt, soaked through with water and sweat that hung from your shoulder.

"I'm fresh out of autographed photos." He grinned at you before walking past and into the locker room.

You attended the odd lacrosse game until the season ended, Michigan never made the finals and it occurred to you that Greg found that mildly satisfying, particularly given the wry smile and wink he shot in your direction after they lost their final game. You bumped into him occasionally, but never intentionally in fear of him purposefully embarrassing you in front of someone who mattered. Yes, he was a complete asshole; representing the embodiment of everything your mother ever told you to avoid in a man. But he was uninhibited, exciting, fearless, dangerous; he was also a genius. You committed every story you heard to memory, desperate to understand the man at the centre of the myth and had developed an almost obsessive late-teenage infatuation. That was until you became a part of it.

Late one evening at the end of his final semester, Greg was again occupying a corner of the anatomy lab performing his final dissection, attention shifting between his cadaver a bottle of bourbon and an increasingly full ashtray. You were at the opposite end with an assortment of pieces of thigh desperately attempting to commit the locations of the major nerves, tendons and blood vessels to memory prior to exams. The pair of you worked in silence for some two hours or more before you heard his stool grate on the lino that covered the lab floor followed by the faint cracking of vertebrae, a long sigh and footsteps heading in your direction.

"Hello Groupie." He leant over you, chin resting on your shoulder, critically examining the chunks of preserved person in front of you and the open illustrated book of anatomy. "Bit self-conscious about your thighs?"

You withdrew to one side, frowning. He held his position in your absence, tilting his head to the side to look at you innocently, emphasising the supposed irrationality of your response.

"I just can't make sense of the nerves and arteries." You sighed, leaning on the cool metal table along side the sectioned pieces of thigh. Greg picked one of the skewers you had been using to mark out the various blood vessels you were attempting to recognise and began to poke at one of the pieces with mild disgust.

"No wonder." He wedged the skewer in between the central quadriceps muscles. "These are just about ready to be chucked out, they're pathetic." Greg paused, watching you as you regarded the location of the skewer. You met his gaze, transfixed by his eyes.

"Come over here and take a look at Andy." He briefly tilted his head in the direction of his corner of the lab.

"Do you name all of your cadavers?" You asked simply to hear his voice again.

"Only my favourites." He replied, already heading back to his corner. You stood and followed, somewhat apprehensive. Greg stood next to the partially covered corpse waiting for you, flicking away part of the sheet to reveal a carefully dissected thigh.

"Lisa, this is Andy's thigh, Andy's thigh this is Lisa." Greg regarded his work with unconcealed pride before noticing the cadaver's partially exposed penis. He quickly rearranged the sheet. "Cover yourself up man, there are ladies present."

"Nothing I haven't seen before." You smiled, admiring Greg's work on the fresher corpse; all of the arteries were clearly visible and suddenly the composition of the human thigh held less mystery in your mind.

"Yes, but think of Andy." You looked up at Greg only to see him gazing down at the cadaver with a look of mock sympathy on his face. He turned to face you, little finger crooked in the air. "He'll never be able to look you in the eye again after this."

You shook your head at him before returning your attention to the thigh.

"What else have you done to him?" You asked seriously.

"Oh come on!" He sighed, exasperated. "Enough of the serious academic questions, I like your tits, not your unbridled enthusiasm."

Ignoring him you flicked the sheet off the cadaver, eyes widening as you took in numerous areas of dissection across the torso revealing the heart, liver and a kidney. You had seen the Professor dissect to expose the heart once in a lecture, but not this well.

"Wow." Cadavers seemed to have that sort of affect on you, and you stood transfixed by what lay before you. So taken by the marvels of anatomy you didn't notice him moving until you felt him behind you, body against yours, breath hot against your ear.

"Tell me what you see." He said softly, stinking of whiskey and formaldehyde, hands sliding slowly around your hips and along the waistband of your jeans, a finger or two snaking under your sweater. Your breath caught in your throat as you searched for words, caught off guard and grappling with the psychological aspect of being highly aroused in the presence of a corpse by a man who had been touching it. You felt his lips on your neck and suddenly the thought that 'Andy' might be watching was irrelevant. You had slept with your high school boyfriend a few times before you left to go to college but no one since, studying took up too much of your time. Greg was older, and as his powerful, confident hands underneath your sweater indicated infinitely more experienced. You slid a hand up to grip the back of his neck as one of his shifted up to firmly cup one of your breasts.

"I don't understand why you're single," he mumbled into your neck. "I swear you've got the best tits on campus." You turned around to face him. "Trust me, I know."

It occurred to you at the time that you wanted to slap him, but with his fingertips dancing lightly over your lower back and his mouth inches from yours all you could do was cling to him. He kissed you, and it was nothing like kissing your old boyfriend. He began slowly; gently almost as if concerned he may scare you off despite the fact he was in complete control of the entire situation. You felt his mouth opening against yours and reciprocated obligingly, his tongue slipping between your lips. You tasted whiskey, cigarettes and something else you couldn't place, it was foreign, adult and exciting. He kissed you harder unclasping your bra beneath your sweater with one hand and forcing you back against the wall, something hard inside his jeans pressing against you insistently. You felt the cool, controlled air of the lab on your skin as he pushed your sweater up just high enough to reveal your breasts, then the chill of the air was replaced by the heat of his mouth on your nipples.

It was insane, intoxicating; this crazy, arrogant man who had been the subject of some childish infatuation of yours for nearly a year had you pinned against a wall next to a partially dissected corpse, feeling things you'd never felt before. You barely touched him, unsure as to where to start but offered no resistance as he unbuttoned your jeans, sending them to the floor along with your highly sensible panties. Then he did something you never forgot, dropping to his knees and kissing you somewhere your old boyfriend never dared to. The warmth and intensity of the sensation you experienced between your thighs was utterly overwhelming, nothing like the infernal poking and prodding you had assumed was the accepted norm. When he stopped you were left gasping, wanting, fingers blindly groping the wall; so close to something that you had such little knowledge of. You were immersed in him and he was intoxicating, his tongue in your mouth again along with a new taste that was thoroughly unfamiliar. You heard the sound of metal connecting with the floor, then felt his hand slide down over your ass to the back of your thigh, lifting one of your leg until your knee was level with his waist, be bent his knees slightly, then he was inside you. Eyes wide, breathless you felt yourself stretching to accommodate him as he lifted you off the ground.

Arms wrapped around his neck, legs around his waist you clung to him as he began to move, pressing you more firmly into the wall with each thrust. It was like nothing you had experienced previously, everything about him was hard, controlling, uncompromising, all you could feel was muscle shifting against you and inside of you, an unfamiliar tension building deep in your abdomen. He pushed into you harder, deeper and your fingers dug into his back as the sensation became more intense. It became unbearable and something inside you seemed to snap, warmth flooding through you and you tightened around him, gasping and silently screaming his name. You felt the muscles in his chest and upper arms firm against you and he thrust hard into you one last time before he came with a low growl, body flat against yours so deep inside you felt as if you were impaled on his length.

He allowed himself a few seconds to catch his breath and regain composure before slowly lowering you back down to the floor and sliding out of you. He didn't care how it was for you, but enjoyed the fact that he had reduced you to an incoherent mess, watching you intently as he pulled up his jeans, a wry smile tickling his lips. You retrieved your jeans from the floor waiting for him to speak as he looked on.

"You went out with the same guy for most of high school, slept with him on prom night and a few times afterward." Greg began, dropping down onto the stool next to Andy's table. "You both went to different colleges, you haven't been with anyone since, too studious to find the time to meet someone and too proper to get drunk and fuck a frat boy."

"How do you know this stuff?" You looked at him warily leaning heavily against the wall, still too fuck-drunk to offer a snappier response.

"It's written all over your face." He was clearly enjoying your naivety. "He'd only ever been with you, and had no idea what he was doing. Right now he's probably drunk somewhere and fucking a cheerleader very badly when what he should be doing is sleeping with an older woman and learning what to do with his cock."

"You've slept with older women?" You asked the obvious question. He just laughed.

"You're going to make some guy very happy one day." Greg smiled at you. "You're also going to annoy the shit out of him."

"Was I any good?" You asked, unsure as to why.

"Yeah." He laughed, looking briefly at the ceiling. "You're great. Go back to your dorm and get some sleep, I've got to tell Andy here about how insanely tight you felt around…"

"You're disgusting." You cut him off, pulling a face at him and his crass remark.

"Hey." He looked at you incredulously. "You just had sex in an anatomy lab next to an exposed cadaver. Look at what you've done to Andy, he's stiff."

That was the last time you saw him at college, but the story became a part of his legend, how on the night before his finals he fucked perennial high-flyer and good girl first-year Lisa Cuddy in the anatomy lab next to the cadaver he was submitting the next day. The next time you saw Greg House he was lying in a bed in your hospital.

As he sits across from you now in your office, and so many years on you wonder how good he really is. He had set the benchmark all those years ago and you had compared everyone to him since and none had fared well. Part of you is convinced that it is a terrible idea, you would sleep with him again only to find he wasn't nearly as good as you had once thought. You were young, inexperienced and infatuated with him, it was the first time you came, utterly intense and thoroughly memorable. You were both older now and referred to each other by surnames. The athlete was gone, replaced by a middle-aged man with a limp, and you were his boss. You watch him and are convinced that he can see straight through your skull and read your thoughts.

"Do you remember med school?" You ask him, waiting for his response.

"Do I remember med school…" He muses, fingers stroking his unshaven chin in contemplation. "Do I remember the lectures, the pracs, the parties, the girls…" He pauses, raising his eyebrows suggestively. "Or is the real question, 'do I remember you in Med School?'"

"Well…" You begin to offer a response, looking down at your desk regretting the fact that you opened your mouth.

"I remember little Lisa the groupie," He smiles at you fondly. "Who watched my lacrosse games." Sadness momentarily flickers across his face. "I remember over-enthusiastic student Lisa who irritated the Professors to no end with her persistent intelligent questions."

"They only put up with me because they enjoyed my breasts." You smile at the memory of him saying it.

"Which is why you wear those tops." He grins at you, gesturing toward the deep 'v' of your cleavage. "In the hope that people will tolerate the fact that you're so incredibly annoying."

"I remember you." You smile at him. "You were exactly the same as you are now." Your smile fades with the realisation. "Just younger." You pause. "You know the other day Cameron asked me whether I knew you in Med School, and what you were like back then."

"Really?" An amused smile flits across his face and the light you remember from all those years ago returns to his eyes. "What did you tell her?"

"That when I met you, you were already a legend." You begin cautiously.

"Anything else?" He asks, still amused at the possibility of you utilising your shared past to unnerve Cameron. "Or should I fill in the details for her?"

"That's all." You conclude.

"You remember that night in anatomy?" He asks grinning wickedly.

"With 'Andy?'" You watch him carefully, desperate to stop the corners of your lips from curling upward into a smile.

"He was never the same after that." House shakes his head at you. "Massive dissection, there were little bits of him everywhere."

Your hand shifts to cover your mouth as the smile wins and you sit shaking your head at him.

"Probably a good thing you spent those extra hours going over femoral anatomy." He taps his cane against the floor and smiles ruefully.

"You know I never lived that down." You sigh, reclining in your chair. "People reminded me about it until I graduated."

"I could tell a few people around here about it if you want." He offers. "The nurses on the third floor can't keep their mouths shut."

"You never told anyone?" You look at him, somewhat astounded.

"No, never." He looks at you clear-eyed and neutral. "A couple of guys showed up to do their dissections and watched the whole thing from the cool room. I never fuel my own myths."

"Oh." The thought of strangers being present leaves you feeling retrospectively embarrassed, but then you remember the cadaver. "At least we know Andy didn't talk."

"No," He looks at you earnestly. "As soon as you left I dissected his larynx."

"Oh god." You shake your head, laughing in mild disbelief. "You know I still have your shirt."

"I know." You look at him quizzically and he enjoys your response. "I found it in your closet."

"How could I forget." You look at him in much the same manner as a disapproving parent. "You broke into my house."

"You've got much better taste in underwear now than you did in college." He grins at you waiting for you to snap.

"You went through my underwear draw." You reply flatly, shaking your head.

"Loved the pink ones." He continues. "Bet they look great on."

You shake your head and fight back a smile. Yeah, fucking him would be so much sweeter now, regardless of whether he could still do you standing up.


End file.
